"Is it too far? Shall we turn back?" asked Jean, when Jem paused again near the rustic bridge, to lean against a tree.
Jem smiled at her. "You must give me a day or two to get up my powers," he said.
Jean did not pester him with solicitude. She had been trained to despise fussiness in the health-line. To be ill at the Rectory was almost a crime; not in the sense in which Sybella Devereux made it a crime, by always ascribing it to the sufferer's own imprudence; but bodily weakness was something to be ashamed of, something to be hidden and trampled under foot.
"Do you remember the last time you and I were here?" asked her companion.
He could not get the recollection of Evelyn out of his head. It was, however, a soft recollection, not unpleasing, though sad; and he could quite well bear to talk of her.
"Just after General Villiers was engaged to Cyril's sister," Jean answered promptly.
"General Villiers told me of the engagement here—in the gorge."
"Yes; I heard him begin, and I ran away. Aunt Marie had been so vexed, because I came upon her and my father talking about it. Aunt Marie didn't like her to marry somebody so old."
"You were a funny little girl in those days." Jem looked attentively into the grave face. "Jean—I should like to see you laugh more."
"Would you? But there is nothing to laugh at."